


grim grinning ghosts

by VeryImportantDemon



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: But Lucifer would like to remind Chloe that he isn't a ghost, Chloe and Dan are still detectives, Gen, He's the King of Hell, Lucifer is stuck in a house, Summoning gone wrong, Trixie is still their daughter, alternative universe, haunted house au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 20:17:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21214460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryImportantDemon/pseuds/VeryImportantDemon
Summary: Chloe isn’t sure why exactly she ended up saddled dealing with her grandmother’s old house in Heaven, Nevada, a little town just north of Las Vegas. It’ll take at least the summer, she thinks, to get the place ready to sell, so she takes her daughter, Trixie, and her ex-husband/best friend, Dan, and heads out to Heaven for two months. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find in the old house, but it definitely wasn’t a ghost/King of Hell called Lucifer Morningstar.





	grim grinning ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> For the Deckerstar Exchange! Hope you like it, missielynne! It was supposed to be just a long one shot but then it felt better to break it up. I'll hopefully have the second part up soon!

A little piece of Heaven just north of Sin City. That’s what the sign on the border between Las Vegas and Heaven says, and Chloe notes it. She drums her fingers on her thigh, glancing at Dan in the driver’s seat. 

“Ha,” Dan says.

“You saw that?” she says. 

Dan hums. “Yeah. Kinda funny.” He tapped his fingers against the wheel to the rhythm of the song playing on the radio. “We went from the City of Angels to Heaven.”

Chloe smiled faintly, glancing out the window. “Is Trix still asleep?” she asked. Dan glanced in the rearview mirror.

“I think so,” he said. “Do you want to wake her up? We’re getting close, I think.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. She twisted slightly, reaching between the seats to touch Trixie’s knee. “Hey, monkey,” she said. 

Trixie stirred slightly, blinking and sitting up. Chloe couldn’t help but smile at her daughter. “We’re almost there, monkey,” she said. 

The little girl yawned, stretching and shifting in the seat. “Really?” she said. “How much longer?” 

“About 20 minutes out,” Dan said.

Trixie sat up excitedly, peering out the window. “Is Great-Grandma’s house cool?” she asked. “With lots of places to explore?”

“Super cool,” Chloe told her. “But it’s old, monkey, and there are lots of things that need to get fixed. So you have to be safe when it’s getting worked on, okay? And only go where Mommy and Daddy say it’s okay.”

“Okay!” Trixie said happily.

It was going to be good, Chloe thought, to get out of the city. Trixie would be going into 3rd grade in the fall and they hadn’t had a good, long trip to the outdoors in awhile. Maybe they could go swimming while they were in Heaven. Have a bonfire. Go camping. Fun, outdoors-y summer things thing didn’t usually get a chance to do. 

This could be good, Chloe thought, leaning back in her seat and watching the Nevada landscape roll by. Maybe a summer in Heaven wouldn’t be terrible. 

—- 

Not even a moment after the car rolled to a stop, crunching gravel under the wheels, Trixie was opening the door and tumbling out. “Trixie!” Chloe called. She opened her own door, leaning out to call her daughter again. “Beatrice Decker Espinoza!”

Trixie skidded to a halt. “We’ve been in the car for hours!” she whined. “I have to pee!”

“You can go in a minute, Trix,” Dan said, climbing out after them. “Help us bring your bags in first.”

The little girl huffed, turning on her heel and heading back towards the car. Dan shrugged in Chloe’s direction before crossing to the back of the car. “ _ Ven aquí, mona! _ ,” he said, pulling the trunk open. He handed her a backpack before she scampered back towards the house. Chloe joined him, holding out her hand for a bag. Dan pulled a backpack and a duffel bag from the trunk, handing them to her. 

“She needs to get some energy out,” Dan said, throwing a bag over each shoulder and slamming the trunk shut. 

“I know,” Chloe said. “I want to get a look at this place, then we’ll try and get something to eat.”

Dan hummed and nodded, following Chloe and Trixie towards the house. Chloe fumbled for a few moments, trying to get the key out of her pocket and into the door, before she finally unlocked the house and let them in. Trixie immediately dropped her backpack by the door before hopping from foot to foot. “Mommy,” she whined. “Bathroom!” 

Chloe laughed, shaking her head slightly. “There should be one behind the stairs,” she said.

Trixie immediately dashed away behind the staircase for the bathroom, leaving Dan and Chloe alone. 

“Well, this is it,” she said with a wry smile. “Two months here.”

“Two months,” Dan said. “Do you want to get started tonight?”

Chloe huffed, shaking her head. “Not tonight,” she said. “I’ll be happy if we can get a place to sleep.” 

“You and me both,” Dan said. “Are there bedrooms on this floor?”

“Should be,” Chloe said. “In the back of the house behind the bathroom, there’s a guest bedroom.”

“I’ll go throw the bags in there and you can wait for Trix,” he said. “We can all sleep in there tonight.” Dan slung a backpack on each shoulder, gathering the rest of the bags on his arms. 

“Dan,” Chloe said. 

“Mm?” Dan said, still shuffling with the bag. Chloe helped him pull the strap of one to rest in his elbow. 

“Thank you for coming with us,” she said. 

Dan shrugged slightly. “Of course,” he said. “How could I not?”

Dragging the bags, Dan disappeared into the back of the house. Chloe really, really loved Dan. Maybe they weren’t meant to be married, but she still loved him, and he’d given her the best thing in her life.

While she waited for her daughter to come back, Chloe wandered a few feet away into the kitchen. She frowned when she saw what looked like an empty crystal liquor glass. She picked it up, frowning at it. There were still a few droplets in the bottom. The real estate agent must have left it, she reasoned, and she put it in the sink. 

A door swinging open caught her attention and she made her way back towards where she’d been waiting. 

Trixie emerged from the bathroom, shaking her hands and sending water droplets flying everywhere. “The toilet sounds weird,” she said. “But the bathroom smells like roses!”

“I know, Monkey,” she said. “Let’s help your dad get our stuff unpacked and I’ll see about getting us some pizza.”

Trixie brightened at the mention of pizza. Pizza and chocolate cake always worked on her. “Okay!” she said happily. 

“Come on, he went back this way,” she said, starting in the direction Dan had taken with her daughter beside her. As they passed the stairs, there was what sounded like a knock and a thump from upstairs that neither of them heard.

—-

“Shit,” Dan said, studying the pizza box and the two liter of soda in front of him. He glanced up at Trixie who was chowing down on a piece across the table of him. “Shoot.” Luckily, she didn’t appear to have heard him. 

“What’s wrong?” Chloe said, lowering the piece of pizza she was about to take a bite of back to her plate. She had to walk all the way out to the end of the long drive so the delivery man knew where to drop.

“Cups,” Dan said. 

“Oh, you’re right,” Chloe said. “We didn’t pack any, did we?”

Dan shook his head. “Nope,” he said. He glanced behind him, standing up from the rickety dining table and reaching for the car keys. “I think we passed a convenience store on the way here. I’ll see if I can find it and get some plastic cups.”

“No, don’t go yet,” Chloe said as she stood up, too. “I can check up in the attic, maybe she’s got some old glassware up there.” 

“You sure?” Dan asked, his hand hovering over the car keys. 

“Yeah,” she said. “I’d rather not have to go out again until we get a better sense of the place during the day.”

“Okay, cool,” Dan said. “You need help?”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Chloe said. “I’ll yell if I need something.”

Dan hummed and nodded, sitting back down at the table with Trixie while Chloe started back towards the staircase. She took it quickly, arriving on the second floor. The lawyer in charge of her grandmother’s will had given her a layout of the house before they’d ever come up here so she had a decent idea of where the attic entrance was. She wound her way through the darkened second floor, flicking on light switches as she went. It was still musty and the light was orangey, but at least she could kind of see where she was going. At the end of the hall was a trapdoor in the ceiling from which a staircase would drop down. She knew there was a lot of stuff in the attic because the lawyer had specifically informed her that all of the effects in the house were hers, too, and that there were plenty. Surely there had to be a box of glassware since it wasn’t in the dining room.

Chloe stretched on her tiptoes to grab the string connected to the trap door, pulling it down to release the staircase. It looked more like a ladder, she decided, as she turned the flashlight on her smartphone on and started to climb the stairs. 

She shined the light around the attic, her eyes catching on the stacks and stacks of boxes. “Jesus,” she murmured. She finally stepped off the stairs and onto the floor that looked like it was put together with planks of wood that were brought into the attic as soon as they were cut from the tree. That was where she began her arduous task of searching for a box that might have china in it. 

Most of the boxes were labeled in neat cursive script so Chloe checked a few to figure out of the system was reliable. The box labeled  _ books  _ had books and  _ photo albums  _ was filled with thick binders. They were both accurate, so instead of pawing through every box, she looked for one labeled china or plates or glasses. It didn’t take her long to find one so she crouched down beside it, pulling the cardboard flaps back. There was a stack of china plates and a few ceramic mugs wrapped in paper. What caught her eye, though, was what looked like a pair of crystal wine glasses. Frowning, she lifted one out of the box. They looked expensive, ornate, and not something her grandmother would have. She wrapped the wine glass back up, slid it back into the box, and lifted the cardboard box onto her hip. She wanted to eat at some point tonight. 

Carefully, Chloe climbed back down the staircase. She was focusing so hard on not dropping the box that she didn’t see the shadows in the darkness begin to shift and move all on their own. 

—- 

The air mattress was blown up and Trixie was sound asleep when Dan reentered the kitchen. Chloe had lingered while he put their daughter to bed, unpacking the rest of the plates and cups from the cardboard box she’d brought down. 

“I got us something,” Dan said. Chloe looked up from the box, the two wine glasses in her hands. 

“What?” she asked. Dan smiled, producing a bottle of wine from behind his back. 

“Your favorite,” he said. 

“I’ve got just the thing,” Chloe added. She washed the two wine glasses quickly in the sink before carrying them over to the table. 

“Where’d those come from?” Dan asked curiously as he poured each of them a glass of red.

Chloe shrugged slightly, taking a sip of the wine. “In my grandmother’s box of dishes,” she said. “Everything else matches but these.”

“Huh,” Dan said and they drank their wine together. 

Chloe really loved Dan. Maybe they didn’t work together romantically but she was her best friend and the father of her child. She would always love him in a way and he’d already promised her best man at his wedding if he ever got married again. It was nice to just sit here with him, enjoying the peace and quiet. 

“We should probably get to bed soon, too,” Chloe said when she had swallowed the last drink of her wine.

Dan drained the rest of his glass, reaching out to take Chloe’s. He pulled back as soon as he touched it. “You shocked me,” he said, shaking his head and taking the glass. 

“Thanks,” Chloe said, squeezing his shoulder before she went past him towards the room where Trixie was already sleeping. She needed to catch up on sleep because she had a feeling she was going to need it this summer. 

—-

They’d been in the house for about three days when Chloe got up one night to get a glass of water. The house was creepy but not too creepy. She had no reason to believe anything weird was happening in the house other than the never-ending piles and piles of her grandmother’s stuff until that day. 

She wandered through the dark hallways towards the kitchen, sneaking past Trixie’ temporary bedroom. She and Dan were sharing the one they had slept in on the first day and Trixie had another bedroom on the first floor. The floors creaked so she made sure to walk lately. Finally, she arrived at the kitchen, reaching up to pull a mug out of the cabinet above the sink. She twisted the tap and had started to fill it when she heard movement behind her. 

“What are you doing up, Monkey?” she asked without turning her back, assuming it was Trixie and she had inadvertently woken her up.

“Monkey?” a voice coming from the direction of the sound said. “Who in Dad’s name is that?” 

Chloe dropped the mug in the sink, spinning around and reaching for her waistband. There should be a gun in there. Why wasn’t there? Oh, right, because she wasn’t on duty and she hadn’t even brought her pistol. “Fuck,” she said. “Who’s there? I’m LAPD!”

The voice scoffed but Chloe still couldn’t make out a person or even a shape. “Don’t worry, Detective,” he said. “I don’t intend to hurt you.”

“ _ Who the fuck are you,”  _ Chloe said. “Show yourself!”

“Give me a moment, darling,” he said. His accent definitely sounded British but she couldn’t bring herself to care about that too much. She was mostly concerned with the person in her home. She grabbed the mug out of the sink, ready to throw it if she had to. 

In front of her, just behind the kitchen table, the shadows shifted and condensed and a dark-haired man in a dapper suit materialized from it. “Pleasure, Detective,” he said, dipping his head slightly. 

Chloe blinked, sure that she was somehow hallucinating because the man had appeared out of nowhere. But somehow what she was concerned with wasn’t that. “How did you know my name?” she said. 

“I’ve been living here for years,” he said. “I heard you come in the other day.”

“How’d you know I was a detective?” she said, still gripping the mug tightly. 

“You said you were LAPD,” he pointed out, “and you look far too intelligent to just be a beat cop.”

Chloe fell silent, her heart racing and her knuckles white. She needed to say something. She needed to figure out who he was. She needed to speak. 

“Are you a ghost?” she blurted. She didn’t really believe in ghosts, but… 

The man snorted. “Am I grim grinning ghost, out to socialize?” he quipped. “No, I’m not a ghost.”

“Then who are you?” Chloe demanded. “What are you?”

The strange man half-bowed very gracefully. “Lucifer Morningstar,” he said, “the King of Hell. At your service.”

“This is an elaborate prank,” Chloe declared a few moments after ‘Lucifer’ had spoken. “Did Dan put you up to this?” It didn’t make sense why Dan would do something like that, but it was the only logical explanation.

“Dan?” Lucifer scoffed, laughing a little. “I can assure you that I live here. I’ve been here longer than you have.”

“But you’re not a ghost,” Chloe said. 

“I am not,” Lucifer affirmed. 

“Then what the hell are you?” 

“I’m the King of Hell,” he said confidently. 

“So you’re a demon,” Chloe said. 

“No,” Lucifer said. 

“But you just said you’re the King of Hell,” Chloe said. 

Lucifer sighed deeply, shaking his head. “I’m the  _ Devil, _ ” he said, not-so-patiently. 

“If you’re the Devil, then why are you in my house?” she asked. 

Lucifer pointed to the cabinet above the sink. “Those,” he said. 

Chloe half-turned, reluctant to have her back to him. “The wine glasses?” she said, confused. 

Lucifer nodded. “Some poor, unfortunate soul back in the 60s tried to do a summoning. It was a powerful one, so I came up here to see what in the literal Hell was going on. And then, of course, they botched it.” Lucifer crossed his arms. “Now my Earthly formed is tethered to those wine glasses because that was what they were drinking out of when they fucked up the summoning. Your grandmother was one of them, you know.” 

Chloe blinked slowly. She must be very, very tired, or have some form of poisoning from mold in the house somewhere and she was hallucinating as a side effect or… Something, because Devils didn’t just appear like that. It was insane. She was going insane. 

“Hold on,” she said finally. 

“It isn’t like I have anywhere to go,” Lucifer said but Chloe was already taking off down the hall. 

Still trying to be at least a little quiet, she burst back into the room that she and Dan shared, shaking him awake. “Dan,” she whispered. “Dan, get up.” 

Dan turned over, blinking in confusion. “What?” he said. 

“Get up,” she said. “There’s something in the kitchen.”

“Something,” he mumbled. 

“ _ Yes, _ ” Chloe said, grabbing his arm. “Get up.” 

She pulled him along with her, the barely-awake Dan stumbling through the house. “Look,” she said when they arrived at the kitchen where Lucifer was still standing casually. “Can you see him?”

“What the fuck!” Dan yelped. He jumped back, frantically looking for something to grab, any kind of weapon. “Chloe, who the fuck-”

“So you can see him,” Chloe interrupted.

“Yes!” Dan shouted. “Who-”

“Lucifer Morningstar,” the man in question said. He was looking Dan up and down, a half smile on his face. “Is this tall drink of water Daniel?” he purred.

“We can’t be both having the same hallucination,” Chloe mused. “So he has to be real. But it doesn’t make any  _ sense. _ ” 

“Someone please tell me what’s going on,” Dan begged. 

“Fine,” Lucifer said. “I’ll recount my story then, if I must.” The ghost - no, he wasn’t a ghost, he was  _ the King of Hell,  _ apparently - crossed his arms and spoke again. His story the second time, to Dan, was almost word for word what it had been when Chloe asked. It was just as fantastical, just as improbable, just as insane. It was so crazy that she was positive she could never have made this up.

Dan didn’t speak for a long moment. 

“Well?” Lucifer prompted. “Don’t just stand there with your mouth open.”

“I’m going to bed,” Dan said finally. “If you still exist in the morning, we’ll deal with it then.” He then turned on his heel and headed back towards the bedroom he and Chloe were sharing. 

“Well, that was fun,” Lucifer told Chloe. “He was-”

“Why,” Chloe interrupted, “is a figment of my imagination flirting with my best friend?”

“Why not?” Lucifer said. “I’ll flirt with you, too, if you’re jealous. I’m so  _ bored.  _ I’ve been here alone for years.” He paused for a beat. “And I’m not a figment of your imagination, haven’t we established that?”

Chloe rubbed her hands over her face, sighing. “I think Dan had the right idea,” she said. “I’m going back to bed. If you’re still… Here in the morning, then we’ll deal with it then.” 

Chloe started towards the bedroom, closing the door behind her. Dan was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching as she entered. 

“That was weird,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “Weird is an understatement.”


End file.
